Star of the Masquerade
by hikachu
Summary: There is no right and no wrong in this. Dio has simply gained the right to hate everything. Character study. Pre-Phantom Blood.


If there was ever a time when he knew fear of this man, a time when he longed for his acceptance or at least a reason that would give some meaning to the endless ringing in his ears and his endlessly grumbling stomach and his mother's disheveled hair, her bruising face, her quiet cries, it must have passed very quickly and when he was still extremely young, because nowadays Dio doesn't remember a single day, hour, minute lived like a beaten dog that still craves for the hand that strikes it.

Perhaps at one point he let the hatred feast on the memories to mend his own pride and give himself something to cling to—an open wound, always tingling and stinging, always there to remind him why he shouldn't lower himself before anyone, not to submit and not to offer a helping hand.

Perhaps, there was once a time when he used to be weak, when he could still have grown into a different person with different thoughts and a different life to pursue, but no matter what the truth is, Dio has no need for it anymore.

Because he learns to respond in kind and then to wait, to endure and strike back at the right time, when it's most painful and it can suck the will to bite out of the most stubborn dogs.

To the ones he can't touch – not yet – because his limbs are still too short and not thick enough, he wordlessly promises that he will never forget and how could he, anyway, with a town and a country and a whole world worth of trash that just awaits to be trampled on by him?

The image of his mother grows further from reality and closer to a dream every day, and Dio wishes that this memory alone he could hold onto, preserve it like he couldn't her dresses and what small bits of jewelry she brought with her when she made the wretched decision to follow a wretched man. Even at twelve – he should be around twelve by now, he thinks – Dio is aware that he can't live off of the remembrance of brief, bittersweet moments of warmth, but mother was, and is, the only beautiful and pure thing that he has ever known and Dio is sure that the world will never allow him to know more.

It's her hand, instead, that Dio remembers vividly; her hand as it was while she forced herself to smile at an empty spot because she couldn't tell where his face was anymore. He remembers that ghastly pallor that melted into light blue-violet under her broken nails. He remembers the cold sweat that made their palms slip against each other and how her desperate hold around his fingers stopped to hurt little by little and he found himself wishing it never would.

Dio remembers wondering, the moment she sighed one last time, _what now_, and even though he will never quite forgive himself for it, he can't bring himself to feel shame, either, because she was, and is, the only beautiful and pure thing he has ever known.

Dio remembers her thick, dark hair and wishes – when the anger is so strong and blinding that he can't help having pathetic thoughts – that his was too, because he hates this man that he has to call father, hates the idea of belonging to him somehow, of sharing things with him that will never go away. Sometimes Dio wishes he could just rip off his own skin or throw up all the blood that ties them together, and these are the times when he goes out with no other hope or intention than to fight the children in the neighborhood: vanishing, weightless creatures with nothing to offer him except for the satisfaction of seeing another living being suffer; the convenient certainty that Dio is not sad and is not weak and what other purpose would these forsaken kids ever have in their short, miserable lives, if he wasn't there to crack their ribs and stomp on their fingers and they didn't need to worry about trying to put on a fight. If this wasn't their place – crying and writhing in the dirty snow, under the sole of Dio's scuffed shoes – they would win, be able to pin him down and kick until he coughed up blood. There is no right and no wrong in this. It's a matter of nature and birthright.

A bell tolls somewhere in London, reminding Dio that it's time for his father's medicine.

He takes the faded copy of the Gospel – a relic with missing pages that his mother used to teach him how to read – from his lap, and puts it away on the wooden surface that doubles as writing desk and dinner table.

He is very careful to drop the right quantity of powder into the glass: it's very expensive, after all, and, smiling, Dio can't help counting the days until it finally works its magic.

There is no right and no wrong in this. Dio has simply gained the right to hate everything.


End file.
